James Harden is disrespecting basketball by being too good at it
Ted Berg writes the Morning Win newsletter for For The Win. Yell at him on Twitter at @OGTedBerg or via email at AskTedBerg@gmail.com.
Ugh, I'm so sick of basketball players scoring all these baskets!
Do they think the object of the sport is to tally more points than the opposing team? That's the only thing that could really explain a guy going out and disrespectfully putting up 50-plus point nights to carry his team to victory. As an informed sports fan, I know better than to want pro athletes doing everything they can to help their teams win; I want fundamentally sound chest-passes keeping every last scrub on the court involved on every possession, even when you've created so much space off the dribble that your defender needs to go on Twitter to explain himself.
This guy James Harden? The worst! I know, because he's leading the NBA in scoring by far, he's setting all sorts of outrageous scoring records, and he's a pretty obvious MVP candidate for a Houston Rockets club that's currently a 3-seed in the mega-competitive Western Conference. Clippers analyst Don MacLean got it exactly right when he pointed out that Harden is the only guy who could do what he's doing and, thus, shouldn't be doing it.
He has also ranked in the Top 10 in the NBA in assists per game in each of the last five seasons because that's sort of the thing about being impossible to defend with only one guy, but a couple of times he has gotten away with pretty obvious travels, and that never ever happens with other prominent NBA stars. Plus, his beard is ostentatiously good. I don't like it. It's basically cheating.
It's cheating! Slow it down, guy. Just because your handle is so good that one deft crossover has left your man sitting on the foul line while you're standing alone at the top of the key doesn't mean you have to take that wide-open 3-point shot. That's an unassisted basket now, and you're selfishly denying your teammates the opportunity to pad some of their stats by passing the ball back to you so they get some credit for your points. You think you're going to bend the rules in some indeterminate way like that and still beat the Golden State Warriors? Think again, buddy.
Even Rockets coach Mike D'Antoni is caught up in this nonsense. During his tenure with the Knicks, D'Antoni was frequently knocked for stubbornly adhering to his "seven seconds or less" strategy, but all it takes is one guy with an unmatched skill set and facial hair and all of a sudden D'Antoni's cool with a player on his team putting up 61-point nights? He caved. Ridiculous.
Harden may currently lead the league in points per game, box plus/minus, win shares and value over replacement level, but that doesn't mean he's necessarily any good. I'm not going to bog you down with boring details about the history of the NBA, but I'll let you know it's just not a circuit where you're going to earn a lot of respect as a flashy dresser who can slash to the basket or knock down buckets from all over the floor.
He should show a little more courtesy to the guys on the court who aren't as effective at finding ways to make the ball go in the hoop, because scoring points isn't the point. They shouldn't even call them "points," really.
Thursday's big winner: Bruce Hornsby
The The Way It Is singer-songwriter and one-time member of the Grateful Dead confirmed that he once beat Allen Iverson in a modified game of 1-on-1 catered to protecting his hands for piano playing. Hornsby is a fan of basketball in Virginia, where Iverson is from, and the pair have been friends since Hornsby reached out to the governor to support Iverson after a 1993 arrest that Hornsby called "a serious miscarriage of justice."
Quick hits: Jets unis, umpires, registries
- The New York Jets held an event to announce their new uniforms and made everyone wait 26 minutes before they actually unveiled the new uniforms. Once they did, it turned out they were the same ones that had leaked online a day earlier. They'll be going 8-8 in a slightly different shade of green next season.
- Umpire Ron Kulpa tossed Houston Astros hitting coach Alex Cintron and manager A.J. Hinch for arguing balls and strikes on Wednesday and made a whole scene in the process. After it appeared he was scanning the Astros' dugout looking for an argument, Kulpa could be seen yelling at Hinch, "I can do anything I want!" So somehow the Jets didn't have the day's worst look.
- University of Virginia guard Kyle Guy is engaged to be married, but his fiancee Alexa Jenkins tweeted that she had to make their gift registry private to comply with NCAA rules. The NCAA denies it and says it's OK for college athletes to get gifts at their wedding. How benevolent!
Hot scheduling take!
Our Andy Nesbitt has proven himself a master of speculative sports re-scheduling, and he dropped a doozy on Thursday: Final Four games should be moved to Thursday and Saturday rather than their current Saturday-Monday alignment. I'm convinced.